The Really Useful Drama Book offers busy primary school teachers a collection of step-by-step drama sessions, inspired by high-quality picturebooks, that will engage children and promote enjoyable learning across the curriculum. Lively and thoughtful, the interactive drama sessions are structured around a wide range of texts, including wordless picturebooks, postmodern picturebooks, short stories, well-known texts by recognisable authors and some you may not have come across before, all chosen for their power to foster curiosity. The step-by-step sessions can also be adapted to incorporate your own ideas and passions, allowing you to structure them for the topics you’re exploring with your class. Each session is structured around two texts and offers a guide to the drama strategies used, teaching objectives, ideas for writing opportunities, problems, emotions and challenges to explore, and a clear guide to exploring each text. Ten key themes are explored: Suspense Prejudice Friendship Rhyme and rhythm War and conflict Nature Overcoming fear Possessions and obsessions Dreams Short stories With a focus on the crucial role of imagination in the classroom, The Really Useful Drama Book helps reclaim a purposeful, passionate pedagogy and shows teachers how drama can place children right at the heart of a story, encouraging their desire to ask questions, solve problems and search out new information.

Offering support to both trainee and practising teachers, the fourth edition of The Really Useful Science Book is the perfect tool for those who wish to extend their subject knowledge, enhance their teaching and create lessons which link directly to the National Curriculum. The easy-to-follow framework provides comprehensive science knowledge for Key Stages 1 and 2 and is fully updated with new material to inspire stimulating and engaging science lessons. The book is divided into three sections: Biology, Chemistry and Physics. Each section integrates key scientific ideas and facts with innovative teaching methods and activity suggestions, and user-friendly language and illustrations help to explain key scientific concepts. With links to global learning, discussion of common misconceptions, and ideas for cross-curricular opportunities, each chapter connects knowledge to practice and informs creative and inspiring teaching. The Really Useful Science Book is an invaluable reference resource for all classroom teachers who wish to develop the confidence to teach enquiry-based practical science with relevance to pupils and their global community.

What is creativity and how do we teach it? The Really Useful Creativity Book provides approaches and ideas that will enable children to develop their creativity. Written for the primary school teacher, student or trainee teacher, the book shows you how creativity can flourish in your classroom. With examples of practice included throughout, the issues covered include: everyday creativity – ideas to get started on straight away planning – with ideas for cross-curricular planning, and many other ways to plan for creativity creativity and the environment – starting with the classroom and school, then going further afield creative Partnerships – working with other people to stimulate children’s creativity the drama of creativity – showing how teachers can adopt the mantle of the expert thinking about creativity – thinking skills for your children, and ways of thinking for you. This lively, stimulating book will help busy teachers working with the National Curriculum to develop children’s creativity.

Now in its third edition, The Really Useful Literacy Book is the definitive guide to the high quality teaching of literacy in your primary classroom. Written specifically for primary school teachers and student trainee teachers, this book offers inventive ideas for the classroom together with an accessible and informative summary of the theories that underpin them. It explores creative approaches to literacy teaching as well as offering a range of units on all areas – speaking, listening, reading and writing. While this book provides creative ideas that can be taken by teachers and developed for their own classrooms, it clearly explains the theoretical rationale for these ideas. It can also be used by school literacy leaders to develop whole school approaches and high quality teaching throughout the school. This accessible and engaging text will be an essential companion for all primary teachers, at any stage in their career, looking to motivate, engage and challenge their children in their literacy lessons.

Everything you need to get dramatic in the classroom This easy-to-use, comprehensive teacher-resource book has lesson plans and practical activities that integrate theater into language learning. Plus ten original scripts so you can put the activities into action immediately! Drama and play scripts can be used to teach pronunciation, pragmatics, and other communication skills, as well as provide grammar and vocabulary practice! Conveniently organized into two parts, Part 1 includes pragmatics mini-lessons, community builders, drama games, and pronunciation activities. There are also lesson plans for producing a play (either fully-staged or as Reader's Theater), as well as guidelines and activities for writing plays to use with (or without students,) and suggestions for integrating academic content. You’ll even find rubrics and evaluation schemes for giving notes and feedback. Part 2 includes 10 original monologues and scripts of varying lengths that can be photocopied and used in the classroom. Specifically designed to feature everyday language and high frequency social interactions, these scenes and sketches follow engaging plot arcs in which characters face obstacles and strive to achieve objectives. With a foreword by Ken Wilson, this book is a must-have for anyone interested in using the performing arts to help students become more confident and fluent speakers.

The Methuen Drama Book of Plays by Black British Writers provides an essential anthology of six of the key plays that have shaped the trajectory of British black theatre from the late-1970s to the present day. In doing so it charts the journey from specialist black theatre companies to the mainstream, including West End success, while providing a cultural and racial barometer for Britain during the last forty years. It opens with Mustapha Matura's 1979 play Welcome Home Jacko which in its depiction of a group of young unemployed West Indians was one of the first to explore issues of youth culture, identity and racial and cultural identification. Jackie Kay's Chiaroscuro examines debates about the politics of black, mixed race and lesbian identities in 1980s Britain, and from the 1990s Winsome Pinnock's Talking in Tongues engages with the politics of feminism to explore issues of black women's identity in Britian and Jamaica. From the first decade of the twenty-first century the three plays include Roy Williams' seminal pub-drama Sing Yer Hearts Out for the Lads, exploring racism and identity against the backdrop of the World Cup; Kwame Kwei-Armah's National Theatre play of 2004, Fix Up, about black cultural history and progress in modern Britain, and finally Bola Agbage's terrific 2007 debut, Gone Too Far!, which examines questions of identity and tensions between Africans and Caribbeans living in Britain. Edited by Lynnette Goddard, this important anthology provides an essential introduction to the last forty years of British black theatre.

The Really Useful ICT Book is a practical and easy-to-use guide to give you all the confidence you need to use ICT really effectively inside and outside the primary classroom. It makes clear how ICT can be taught as a standalone subject, and how it can be used easily and imaginatively to enhance teaching other subjects. Jam-packed with ideas and templates to save you time, this friendly handbook offers an introduction to: using ICT inside the classroom – including interactive whiteboards, computer suites, VLEs and e-safety using ICT outside the classroom – including word processors, laptops, data loggers and digital cameras when and how to use a wide range of software and hardware – from spreadsheet packages through to digital photography, e-portfolios and software simulation using ICT in all subject areas practical suggestions for using ICT in cross-curricular topics using ICT to develop teacher and pupil creativity using ICT for assessment and in your professional role. With an emphasis on developing children’s creativity and on progression from Key Stage 1 to Key Stage 2, The Really Useful ICT Book is a comprehensive compendium of advice and inspiration for all training, newly qualified and experienced teachers, as well as those in support roles in primary schools.

A New Classic for Today's Dancer The Ballet Companion is a fresh, comprehensive, and thoroughly up-to-date reference book for the dancer. With 150 stunning photographs of ballet stars Maria Riccetto and Benjamin Millepied demonstrating perfect execution of positions and steps, this elegant volume brims with everything today's dance student needs, including: Practical advice for getting started, such as selecting a school, making the most of class, and studio etiquette Explanations of ballet fundamentals and major training systems An illustrated guide through ballet class -- warm-up, barre, and center floor Guidelines for safe, healthy dancing through a sensible diet, injury prevention, and cross-training with yoga and Pilates Descriptions of must-see ballets and glossaries of dance, music, and theater terms Along the way you'll find technique secrets from stars of American Ballet Theatre, lavishly illustrated sidebars on ballet history, and tips on everything from styling a ballet bun to stage makeup to performing the perfect pirouette. Whether a budding ballerina, serious student, or adult returning to ballet, dancers will find a lively mix of ballet's time-honored traditions and essential new information.

Theatre Craft is an all-encompassing, practical guide for anyone working in the theatre, from the enthusiastic amateur to the committed professional. With entries arranged alphabetically, Theatre Craft offers advice on all areas of directing, from Acting, Adaptation, and Accent to Sound Effects, Superstition, Trap Doors and Wardrobe. Enlightening and entertaining by turns, the celebrated director John Caird shares his profound knowledge of the stage to provide an invaluable companion to anyone creating a play, musical or opera. Whatever the theatre space - the backroom of a bar, a studio theatre, or the biggest stages of the West End or Broadway - this authoritative volume is an essential reference tool for the modern theatre practitioner. Internationally renowned theatre director John Caird has directed and adapted countless productions of plays, operas, and musicals for the Royal Shakespeare Company, London's National Theatre, in the West End, and on Broadway-from Les Misérables and Nicholas Nickleby to Hamlet and Peter Pan.

Drama and Reading for Meaning Ages 4-11 contains over 40 creative drama ideas to help develop reading for meaning in the primary school. The wide range of clearly explained, structured and engaging drama activities will appeal to all primary practitioners who wish to develop more creative approaches to the teaching of reading. The activities show how drama can develop some of the skills associated with reading for meaning such as empathising with characters’ feelings, exploring settings and themes and making inferences based on evidence. The step-by-step activities range from familiar classroom drama strategies such as freeze-frames and hot-seating to less well-known approaches involving whole class drama experiences. The book also serves as an introduction to using drama as a learning medium, with advice on how to set the ground rules and clear explanations of the drama strategies. Each chapter has a detailed explanation of what to do, followed by a number of examples linked to quality texts, including poetry and non-fiction. From bringing books to life in reception and Years 1 and 2, to peeling back the layers of meanings in Years 3 to 6, all the drama activities in this book are designed to improve reading for meaning and help motivate children to read for pleasure, making this an essential resource for all primary settings.